Essential reading for all young professionals and new grads launching their own

1 ] The Parents Guide to The Career Playbook

career adventure. LORI GOLER, VICE PRESIDENT OF HUMAN RESOURCES AND RECRUITING, FACEBOOK

The Parents Guide to

The Career

Playbook
What Every Parent of a
Graduate or Graduating
Student Needs to Know

JAMES M. CITRIN

Leader, CEO Practice at Spencer Stuart, the Worlds Premier Executive Search Firm

The Parents
Guide to

Playbook
What Every Parent of a
Graduate or Graduating
Student Needs to Know

] The Parents Guide to The Career Playbook

What to Expect
Congratulations! You have successfully managed to
guide your child into college and into young adulthood.
But now an even more daunting challenge awaits
helping your son or daughter make the transition from
college to the real world. It is a perilous and stressful
time for you and for your child as he or she attempts to
launch and navigate the first few years of their career,
one that will lead to greater independence and engagement with the world. So how can you, as a parent, help
as your child struggles to find a career path that is in the
right direction for him or her while still supporting
his or her own decisions?
I wrote The Career Playbook to give young careerminded individuals eager to find their path in life a comprehensive guide to successfully identifying, launching,
and managing their career. As the head of our CEO practice at Spencer Stuart, one of the top executive search
firms in the world, I work day in and day out matching
peoples individual skills, passions, and experiences to
positions that will help them, and their organizations,
thrive. Im also the parent of three twenty-something
kids, two recent college grads and a college junior.
My goal in writing The Parents Guide to The Career
Playbook is to convey the most essential concepts that
will help you give your son or daughter the best advice.
The fact is, landing an attractive job with a good company that gives graduates the opportunity to learn and grow
is far harder than getting into even the most selective

] The Parents Guide to The Career Playbook

universities. The acceptance rates for entry-level positions at Johnson & Johnson, MetLife, McKinsey and
Company, and Goldman Sachs, for example, range
from 0.5 percent to 2.0 percent, far more difficult than
Harvards and Stanfords 5.9 percent admissions rates.
So knowing what they are up against is crucial.

The key question for you as a parent is how you can

help your son or daughter constructively, taking into
account the sobering realities of the job market on the
one hand and the often delicate dynamics of parent-child
advice rendering on the other.
To help, Ill first discuss career trajectory (there are
six distinct phases to most peoples careers); then Ill
cover how to grapple with the inevitable trade-offs (or
what I call the career triangle) and often competing desires for money, job satisfaction, and a quality lifestyle;
and finally I will delve into the importance of relationshipsboth in business and outside of it. I believe that

] The Parents Guide to The Career Playbook

with these three fundamental concepts, coupled with

love and a healthy dose of understanding and sensitivity, you will be well equipped to help your son or daughter pursue and find the right job, begin their path to
achieving career success and professional fulfillment,
and ultimately build and live the life he or she wants
to lead.
Introduction
I have a deep appreciation for just how hard it is for
people starting out in their careers to figure out life, to
land a good job, and to pursue their dreams and become
the person they want to be. Early on in my own career, I
interviewed, unsuccessfully, at Irving Trust (then one
of the big commercial banks), Procter & Gamble, Boston Consulting Group, and many other firms before
landing my early jobs at Morgan Stanley, Goldman
Sachs, McKinsey and Company, and Readers Digest.
Twelve years and four jobs after graduating from Vassar
College, I finally settled into the right career path
for me at Spencer Stuart. That was now twenty-two
years ago.
One challenge I find is that when senior people
give advice to those starting out, they often tell their
stories in a way that makes their career path seem
entirely logical, as if their success was inevitable. But
the fact is, when your child is trying to figure out
whats out there, scheduling interviews or deciding
which company to approach or job to pursue, and is also
worrying about getting a decent salary, much less securing solid long-term career prospects in a chosen field,
nothing is clear. Certainty exists only in hindsight.

] The Parents Guide to The Career Playbook

In The Career Playbook, I share everything Ive

learned about how to launch a successful career, thanks
to two-plus decades of working one-on-one with some
of the most successful chief executives, entrepreneurs,
not-for-profit leaders, and business gurus around the
world. My goal is to present this advice in a way that
will be helpful to those starting out in todays hypercompetitive, fast-changing world, where the rules are
unknown and the goalposts are constantly moving.
DO!
Be encouraging and supportive but equally honest and realistic.
Recognize that this is a difficult and stressful time in
your graduates life.

DONT!
Dont try to sugarcoat the challenges and make the task of getting
a job and launching a career seem less arduous than it is.

The Job Market Today

The career marketplace for new graduates has never
been more competitive, unstructured, and difficult to
navigate. For every appealing entry-level professional
position in a given industry, there are dozens, often hundreds, and sometimes thousands of candidates. Johnson
& Johnson receives more than 180,000 applications each
year for the approximately 720 positions the company
hires directly from colleges and universities. MetLife
receives an average of 150,000 applications each year
for their approximately 2,500 entry-level positions. And
the competition is just as fierce at the leading financial
services companies, consulting firms, and not-for-profits

] The Parents Guide to The Career Playbook

(like the American Red Cross), much less the worlds

most competitive tech firms, such as Facebook and
Google.
If your son or daughter recently graduated from
college or is about to graduate and become a new
entrant in the job market, he or she is almost certainly
consumed by such questions as how to stand out and
break through the sea of other applicants to land an
interview; how to obtain the right introductions; how to
know which questions to ask; and how to know which
jobs to even pursue in the first place.
The nature of todays career paths have changed,
as have the tools used for job searching. Your son or
daughter will want a good-paying job, of course, hopefully in an interesting field with the potential for career
advancement. But todays graduates and the thousands
of millennials Ive talked to who are starting out in the
working world today also want to work for an organization that aligns with their values and makes them proud
to be there. They want a job that offers the opportunity
to achieve, over time, the lifestyle they want to live
and ultimately to be able to live in the city or region
they are attracted to and to afford the things a goodpaying job leads to, such as a house, a car, travel and
entertainment, and the ability to raise a family.

The Boomerang Graduate

Weve all heard stories of recent graduates being forced to move back
in with their parents after applying unsuccessfully for scores of jobs
or settling for minimum-wage jobs or positions they are overqualified
for that they wouldnt have even considered before college. Of the

] The Parents Guide to The Career Playbook

more than three million college graduates who entered the U.S. workforce in 2013, nearly half accepted jobs for which they believed they
were overqualified. In 2012, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of
New York, 44 percent of recent graduates were working in positions that
typically dont require a college degree, up from 34 percent in 2001.
Why? Because recent graduates are desperate to find a job, any job, to
pay the bills so that they can live on their own, without your support.
Finding a position that will lead to a promising career path is considered a luxury that many simply cannot afford. Those fortunate enough to
land a job in the post-recession market of 2010 and 2011 were forced to
take almost a 20 percent pay cut from pre-recession levels. And when
graduates start in a financial hole like this, earnings can lag for years,
even after the job market recovers. Companies tend to make their compensation awards based on where a person worked previously and on
their previous salary. And these financial pressures are further exacerbated by student loans; the average college graduate now carries a debt
of nearly $30,000. The combination of underemployment and college
debt can be toxic. It helps to explain why young people are delaying
home ownership (just 36 percent of heads of households under age
thirty-five own a home, down from 41 percent in 2008, according to the
U.S. census).
At the same time, with WhatsApp having been sold to Facebook
for $19 billion (that was $350 million per company employee) or
Snapchat being valued at $12 billion (down from its 2015 valuation of
$16 billion but still not too shabby), it makes recent graduates rethink
whether they should even try to knock their heads against the wall of a
traditional career path. Today is the golden age of the start-up (for the
time being), where it seems like any talented, ambitious person with
initiative and an idea can strike it richor at least get a jobby
founding a start-up and then selling it to a large company. If you
have entrepreneurial genes and a good idea, why not try to get in on
the ground floor of a company that may later get acquihired by a
large company like Google, Yahoo, Facebook, or Twitter (each acquired
between twenty-five and sixty companies from 2012 to 2014)? Many
small companiesfor example, mobile app developers like Stamped,
OnTheAir, GoPolGo, Alike, Spindle, LuckySort, and Posterouswere
acquired for their talent and had their services shut down and their
teams integrated into the acquiring companies.

] The Parents Guide to The Career Playbook

But todays employees also want to be respected.

Your daughter wants a chance to show what she can
do, to be challenged, and to have the opportunity to
grow in her job or organization. And more than any
previous generations, she wants to work on something
meaningful, to make a difference. Along with this,
she wants the flexibility and freedom to pursue her
interests outside of work. She realizes that she is likely to work for many different employers during her
career. But she welcomes the opportunity to join an
established company that offers security and training
programs that help her to grow her skills and advance
her career.
As a Parent, What Can You Do?
The truth is, its difficult to advise your own kids about
how to get a good job or tell them how careers really
work. You can expect that your advice will be heavily
discounted. For one thing, much has changed since you
were a new grad or in your twenties. And your kids may
not realize that you appreciate that.
DO!
Do lay out the necessary steps for your grad to reach his or her goal.
Offer to review his or her rsum and target list.

DONT!
Dont unilaterally apply your judgment about what to do with
your grads journey, this is his or her time.

Your son or daughter has probably already gotten a

fair amount of advice on the steps to take in finding a

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job from a career-counseling office or friends, including

the basics of setting up a LinkedIn profile, writing a
rsum, and interviewing strategies. He or she may have
been taught how to create a target list that organizes
his or her desired employers into a spreadsheet, with
contacts, follow-ups, and next steps. These are just
a few of the things The Career Playbook and good
career counselors can teach. But your student or graduate is likely looking to you for something else. You
wont be helpful byor appreciated forattempting
to organize his or her job search, nagging, or serving
up unhelpful platitudes like follow your passion.
Instead, what you can do is help your graduate think
through the necessary trade-offs that will need to be
made and offer genuine encouragement to soldier forth
despite the frequent rejections and setbacks that are par
for the course. I urge you to resist the all-too-natural
tendency to relate their process back to your own experience. Even though it is well-intentioned, it comes
across as Heres how I did it, so thats how you should
do it, too. Instead, let your daughter or son know that a
career path will not and should not be expected to be a
straight line, and thats okay.
DO!
Provide guidance on how careers really work and how he or she
can approach the job search.

DONT!
Dont do the work for your grad. It is both counterproductive
and important that he or she learnsand growsby doing.

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] The Parents Guide to The Career Playbook

What You Need to Know to Help

Your Grad with His or Her Career
In this parents guide, I cover three key areas where
you can be the most helpful. In addition to your love
and support, you can help by: 1) talking with your son
or daughter about how careers work, 2) helping him
or her understand the trade-offs involved in choosing
one job or career over another, and 3) discussing the
fundamental importance of relationships in a career,
whatever the industry or sector. At the same time, you
can be an effective parent by keeping in mind that building a career is an essential part of growing as an adult
and as an individual. Obviously, your grad will want to
make decisions on his or her own. But he or she will
benefit from a playbook to understand the options as he
or she goes down this uncharted path, from you acting
as a caring parent by supporting the choices made and
allowing the space to make occasional mistakes. The
details and specifics of developing and managing his
or her career will likely best be served by advisers and
mentors, industry veterans, friends, books, and online
resources. With this knowledge and The Career Playbook in hand, your grad should be prepared for the start
of a long and fulfilling career.
Six Phases of a Career
An employees value to an employer changes following
a pattern strikingly similar to how physicists describe
the properties of energy: potential energy, energy at
rest, and kinetic energy, which is energy in motion.

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As your new graduate prepares to enter the workforce, she is building up her store of potential valuethe
value she will be able to add to her career or company
in the futurebased on exercising her intellectual and
interpersonal energies; applying her education, thought
processes, and academic achievements; and bringing
her enthusiasm, work ethic, and energy to her endeavors.

As she lands her first job and begins to gain experience, this potential is translated into knowledge and
momentum, as she becomes increasingly more valuable
based on her professional expertise, reputation, and
track record. Picture a child on a swing, kicking her legs
and causing her to go higher and higher. That is how
a career takes off. She begins her career with the scale
registering heavy on potential and light on experience.
As she moves through her career, the scales shift and
the experience side eventually outweighs the potential
side. The trick is to add to the experience side of the

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scale without emptying the potential side. The more

she can turn potential value into valuable experience,
which can then be converted into greater potential, the
more valuable she will become in the career market
over time.
Lets turn to the six phases that most careers follow.
For the purpose of helping to advise recent graduates,
and those soon to graduate, I will focus primarily on the
first phase, as your son or daughter seeks out entry-level
jobs.
Aspiration

The first phase of launching a career, which begins in

college and continues through the first two or three years
in the workforce, marks a transition into independence
and adulthood. It draws on everything your daughter
has learned in college and through internships and
other work experience (as well, of course, as the values
and lessons you have helped to instill at home), coupled

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with the challenges she has met or faced in her first

exposure to the work world. The Aspiration Phase is
about discovery, about the process of learning, the establishment of a network of friends, colleagues, and
mentors, and about the development of industryspecific knowledge. It is the time when her early
experiences in the work world will inform her interests and strengths. In this phase of a career, her value
in the market is based almost completely on her potential. So her most important objective is to discover her
strengths and to begin learning marketable skills. She
will likely try out many different kinds of tasks and
jobs, getting constant feedback first from professors and
peers while still in school and then in the workplace
from managers, peers, and mentors who can help her to
identify what she is good atand what shes not good
at. The Aspiration Phase is an opportunity to gain exposure, build skills, work on weaknesses, and fill in gaps in
knowledge, with few long-term negative consequences.
Taking a wrong turn or coming to a dead end and having to start over at this stage of a career is common, and
not something that should negatively impact her future
prospects.
In the Aspiration Phase, your son wont yet have
much of the industry-specific knowledge that hell gain
as his career unfolds. So he should focus on acquiring
life skills that are valued in every industry: the ability to write clearly and succinctly; the ability to think
critically; the all-too-often rare ability to listen well; the
ability to problem-solve; and the ability to collaborate
effectively with others. But he shouldnt forget to focus
attention on his life outside of work, taking the time to

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build meaningful friendships and to establish healthy

living habits, from eating well to working out to getting enough sleep, and trying out activities he might
enjoy. These skills, coupled with the people and project skills hell develop at work, are the foundation of
every successful career. If your son or daughter concentrates on building them now, he or she will be poised for
success in their field and in life as they develop more
specialized skills later on.
The Career Triangle: Job Satisfaction,
Compensation, and Lifestyle

The Bermuda Triangle is a roughly one-million-squaremile expanse between the picturesque Atlantic island its
named for, Miami, Florida, and San Juan, Puerto Rico, in
which wayward ships and airplanes have reportedly disappeared, without a trace, for centuries. As I talk about
in The Career Playbook, the Career Triangle is a much
more benign site of potential turbulence, but one that
can be challenging to navigate just the same.

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I pointed out the ways in which employers value employees at various points in their careers. Now its time
to turn to the ways in which your graduate will value
his or her employer. There are three broad factors he
or she will want to consider when trying to determine
which job or career is right. These three factors constitute the Career Triangle: job satisfaction, compensation,
and the lifestyle that the job allows him or her to lead.
1. Job Satisfaction. This involves the nature of the
position: how much she will learn and develop, how
much she likes and respects those with whom she works,
and how fundamentally interested she is in the field,
department, and business. It may also reflect how prestigious the organization is and how proud she is to be
associated with its products, services, or brand.
2. Compensation. This includes wages, salary, and
potential for bonuses, as well as benefits, such as health
insurance and 401(k) plans. It also includes any equity,
options, or long-term incentive compensation.
3. Lifestyle. This has to do with how the job fits into
his life, or how his life fits into the job. How long are
the working hours? Is the organization located in a city
he wants to live in? What is the commute like? What are
the companys policies and cultural practices with regard to vacations and sick or personal time? How much
control does he have over his schedule? How much travel is involved? Does the job involve intense deadlines
and crunch times, and how does he work under that
kind of pressure?

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He or She Can Have It AllEventually

The good news is that he or she can achieve high
marks in all three areas; the bad news is that he or she
cant necessarily have them all now, at the same time,
especially in the early stages of his or her career. Job
satisfaction, money, and lifestyle are almost always at
odds with one another, and this is especially true as a
graduate starts his or her career. Sometimes, shell need
to work long hours to be successful in a job that pays
well. And one danger is that he may reach a point where
he feels hes had to sell out in terms of living the
life he wants in order to make more money and climb
the corporate ladder. Or perhaps she found a job that
pays well and gives her a broad level of control over her
schedule, but the job itself involved debilitating stress
or perhaps, even worse, drudgery.
Trade-offs in the early stages of a career are often a
necessary evil. But the more he consciously weighs each
of the three factors and makes decisions about what is
most important to him, the better he will weather each
career phase and make the right decisions, at the right
stages of his career, about the future.

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Aspiration Phase

In the early years of a career, when your daughter is

new to the workforce and focused on exploration, selfdiscovery, and learning new skills, there is little point
in her attempting to maximize income or effect significant change in the company. Of course she should want
to be challenged in the job, but many of her tasks will
be the more basic ones that simply need to get done
doing research, writing reports, handling internal and
external communications, setting up meetings, and the
like. Her work will be more mundane and far less strategic than the projects and decision-making more senior
people are involved with. It may well be less intellectually demanding and stimulating than her recent
academic studies. She can expect to earn an entry-level

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compensation in this phase. Money is always important, but for many people new to the workforce, its less
important in this phase, when they have little or no experience in their job or company or industry, than it is
later on when they have more experience and the personal and family obligations that go with it.
And speaking of money, a topic often not polite to
talk about, there are two ways to think about it. Its very
helpful for your new grad to have a clear-eyed view of
how they think about money and pursue the strategy
that is most likely to meet their objectives. Making
the most money can be either the primary objective of
getting a job and pursuing a career or it can be a supporting objective. As obvious as this will sound (in fact,
this is so obvious that it is frequently overlooked!), if
your daughter or son wants to make a lot of money, the
single best way to do that is to go into a field that pays
well. Even average performers in high-paying fields,
such as finance, engineering, and law, will earn much
greater than average compensation. At the same time,
star performers in low-paying fields, such as teaching,
social work, and the creative arts, will face struggles
trying to afford the life they want to lead. However, if
this is the path that your son or daughter wants to pursue, then they have a major advantage compared to you
and me. Time. In this case, he or she should follow the
advice of one of our sagest founding fathers, Benjamin
Franklin: Save while you are young to spend while you
are old.
In most entry-level positions, work hours are less intense than they are at later points in a career. (Of course
there are exceptions, such as consulting work, invest-

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ment banking, law firms, medical internships, et cetera,

but many of those require professional degrees). Your
son may find himself working in a major city like New
York, San Francisco, or Chicago, but he shouldnt be
afraid to look for opportunities in smaller markets and
cities, or even in a foreign or emerging market where
the opportunities may be more plentiful, and he can develop skills over the long term that will set him apart
from everyone else.
Promise Phase

As most people move into the next phase of a career,

what I call the Promise Phase, the Career Triangle plays
out differently, with job satisfaction and compensation
often overtaking lifestyle in terms of importance. For
most people, the goal at this stage of a career is to figure
out their interests and what they are really good at, and
then spend time building a track record of high-quality

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work and success in those areas of interest. The most

important task in this career phase is to become known
as an outstanding contributor to the department, company, or organization. So as your son or daughter moves
into their mid to late twenties, he or she will often need
to outshine, and often outwork, colleagues and competitors. And that often means sacrifice in terms of lifestyle
and leisure time.
Momentum Phase

Let me identify one additional career phase to keep in

mind when looking at the big picturewhat I call the
Momentum Phase. This is the phase when most people
approach their peak financial value as a professional. In
the Momentum Phase, you want to maximize current
and long-term compensation and take on more responsibility. Someone in this phase is likely to be raising a
family, so making decisions about work/life balance is

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essential. As you know all too well, when one becomes a

parent, juggling childcare, academic and athletic activities, recitals, teacher conferences, PTA meetings, and
other family events is part of the territory. When your
son or daughter reaches this phase, he or she is likely going to need to balance professional demands with
those of a partners or spouses career.
Because of this, he or she may need to dial back
expectations for advancement or job satisfaction during
this phase. Of course, he or she will want to work on
challenges that will open new markets, businesses, and
opportunities. But in the Momentum Phase, it may be
tougher for him or her to push to become part of senior
management or expand a practice as a doctor, lawyer,
engineer, or other professional. But that is okay. For
now, the job may have to be a means to an end rather
than an end in and of itself. He or she will be able to
refocus on his or her career in the years ahead when the
kids are older (of course hopefully you will be able to
help as a grandparent!).
The Power of Relationships
Success in life is so much about connections and who
you know, author Ben Stein says, and so little about
memorizing even the greatest of plays or knowing how
to weigh the moon. There should be a special seminar
in making and keeping connections.

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This section is a primer on that special seminar.

DO!
Start these discussions early so that your son or daughter can see
whats possible. The exploration processas well as identifying
potential internshipscan begin as early as freshman year.

DONT!
Dont wait until the last minute.

The clich Its not what you know, but who you
know may well be hackneyed, but as with most clichs,
it contains a strong element of truth. When it comes to
finding a job and advancing in a career, there is simply
no substitute for relationships and networks. According
to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 70 percent of all
jobs are found through networking. So even if your son
or daughter is one of the 30 percent who defy the odds
in landing a job directly through an application process
without the aid of relationships, the fact remains that
employers fill the majority of positions with people
they know or people who have been personally referred.

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In our survey of young professionals that was a core

element of research for The Career Playbook, more
than half of the respondents reported having gotten their current job through networking. They were
introduced to the hiring manager through a personal
connection, were recruited by someone they knew, or
were recommended to someone at the company by a
family friend or mentor, or they leveraged their universitys alumni network.
Networks and relationships are central to getting a
good job. But they are just as essential to your daughters advancement and success once shes in the job.
Most of the things that we all do in our professional
lives will depend on the cooperation of others. How
your daughter relates to those above, adjacent to, and
below her will have a direct effect on how well she is
able to do her job. Even situations that dont seem to
involve a personal relationship, like taking a class from
a professor in college, volunteering for a charity drive,
or getting help from a government official, are affected by her relationship skills. To achieve her goals, from
securing the best job, to working on the most interesting projects, to earning a promotion, to building a reputation, she will need the support and favor of people
who are in a position to help (and to avoid upsetting
those people who might hold her back).
But wait (as the infomercial saying goes), theres
more! The number one factor leading to happiness at
work, according to extensive research, is the quality of a
persons relationships. You may be surprised to discover
that 100 percent of the business leaders we surveyed in
our research for this book and 97 percent of the young

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professionals ranked relationships above their health,

personal impact, and compensation in importance. Put
another way, it is imperative that your son develop a
relationship mind-set. And after workplace surveys
covering several million people conducted over many
years, the Gallup Organization has concluded that
the number one driver of job satisfaction on the job is
whether an employee feels that there is someone in the
organization that he or she considers a best friend.
A Relationship Mind-set
It is therefore imperative to have a relationship mindset at work and in life. But what does that really mean?
First, it means recognizing that all business relationships are also personal relationships. The most
common mistake people make when building relationships in their professional lives, according to Keith
Ferrazzi, author of the bestselling classic on networking Never Eat Alone, is treating business counterparts
differently from our personal friends. This approach
not only makes for a lonely life at work, it can also work
against your son or daughter professionally, because
genuine relationships lay the foundation for much of
what happens in business, whether negotiating for a
contract or a job or pursuing opportunities to work on
new projects.

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DO!
Its okay to use your contacts and relationships to reach out on behalf
of your son or daughter. But its more effective to have a friend serve
as advocate/mentor for your child.

DONT!
Dont forget that what goes around comes around. Make it a
priority to spend time and effort advising and helping your friends
children, too. And dont neglect to follow up with your friends about
their interactions with your child to get honest feedback. Are there
things she is doing well? Are there things she could do better?

Employers generally evaluate job applicants along

two dimensions: their experience and whether theyre
a fit for the companys culture. This means that,
when interviewing for a job, the interviewer will be
assessing your son or daughter partly on the basis of
personal relationships. Do the people who talked to
him or her like them? Do they sense that they can trust
her? Do they feel comfortable around him? The same
emphasis on relationships is true when businesses
award client work, whether in advertising, technology,
investments, consulting, accounting, or legal services.
If personal relationships are so important, how can
your son or daughter build them with colleagues and
clients? As it turns out, he doesnt need to overthink
this. He builds professional relationships in the same
way that he makes friends outside of work, by building
trust through interactions and getting together, shared
experiences, honesty, loyalty, and through opening up
(to an appropriate degree) about his past, hopes, fears,
and the things that excite him. As Ferrazzi explains,
Show them that besides being professional, youre
human . . . go into what really mattersyour goals

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and dreams, your concerns and anxieties, your family situation and the business issues [or work concerns]
that keep you up at night. Dont think for a moment
that theyll think less of you. In fact, usually the
opposite happens. When your son reveals private things
about himself, whether past experiences, thoughts,
beliefs, or feelings, it encourages the other person to
confide in him, helping to strengthen friendships and
establish trust.
Connections
Everyone knows that social connections are important.
Where you live, where you went to school, even if you
went to summer camp, can all influence how much
access you have to others. The more connections your
daughter has, the easier it is for her to gain access and
the more readily she will be able to build valuable relationships beyond those she has with her peers. But even
if youre not a prominent businessperson or she isnt an
Ivy League graduate, it doesnt mean she cant find and
cultivate valuable connections.
By graduation and beyond, she knows lots of people: friends from high school and college, contacts at
organizations she has volunteered for, and teammates
on sports teams. She has interacted with and developed shared interests and experiences with hundreds of
people. Your family and friends also know hundreds of
people. Your son may not know exactly the right person
he needs to know personally, but if hes creative, ambitious, and optimistic, he will be able to find someone
who knows someone who knows someone. He should

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ask your sister (his aunt) who she knows on Wall Street.
Or his former economics professor. Or your own financial adviser. Perhaps your daughters high school math
teacher went to Dartmouth, Tulane, or Indiana and can
connect her with a decision-maker who graduated in
the same class. She should contact her universitys career planning office and work with the advisers there
to build a list of prominent, as well as young, alumni
in her field of interest. The more she adopts a relationship mind-set, the more opportunities will find a way to
present themselves.
As a parent, you can send your childs rsum to
friends of yours to create additional opportunities for
informational interviews, advisory meetings, or coffee
get-togethers. Your support can prove invaluable in
creating that extra boost to make this seemingly impossible and difficult task a little easier.
I Personally Hate the Word Networking
I really dislike networking. As you have seen, I have no
aversion to meeting new people, building relationships,
soliciting help, and proffering or asking for advice. I just
find the term networking crass, with hints of Machiavelli. To me, networking connotes a crowded recruiting
fair, business conference, or a corporate cocktail party
with inexpensive wine and hundreds of people I dont
know all looking desperately for a job or a lead. It is
essentially a one-way street for exploiting others for
your own gain. I much prefer the words and spirit
behind the two-way street of relationship building.
Thats not to say that reaching out to others is not

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important. As Eric Barker writes in his popular newsletter, Barking Up the Wrong Tree, Everyone needs to
network. And I mean everyone. I cited research at the
beginning of this section that shows that networking is
essential to garnering the majority of jobs. According
to Barker, it also makes you more likely to be successful at your job, increase your salary, develop increased
expertise based on valuable informal interactions, and
be more creative.
So what are the most viable strategies for reaching
out to others for an aspiring young professional?
Here Are My Top Three Suggestions:
1. Reconnect with old friends and reawaken
dormant relationships. Research suggests that people
who you used to be friends with but with whom you
havent been in recent touch can be even more helpful
than your current relationships. Adam Grant, a professor at the Wharton School of Business and bestselling
author of Give and Take, describes the power of what
he calls weak ties. Our closest contacts tend to know
the same people and information as we do. Weak ties
travel in different circles and learn different things,
so they can offer us more efficient access to novel
information. So your son should contact his extended
Facebook friends, follow up on contacts suggested by
LinkedIn, and be creative in trying to rekindle former
relationships.
2. Focus special attention on those who are
superconnectors. These are the small number of
friends and mentors who serve as conduits to lots of in-

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dividuals and organizations. You know the kind of people I mean. They are the rare few who seem to know
everyone, who have a disproportionate number of
friends, acquaintances, and contacts. Your daughter should identify the brokers in her network and
focus her networking efforts first on those special few,
through calls, e-mails, and visits.
3. Help others. To adapt John F. Kennedys famous
invocation: Ask not what your friend or colleague
can do for you; ask what you can do for your friend or
colleague. The more that your son can start thinking about how to help those whom he meets, the more
effective at relationship building and networking he
ultimately will be. When he has meetings and phone
conversations he should find a way to ask, How can I
help you? After an interview or informational meeting, rather than just sending a perfunctory thank-you
note (and hopefully by now he has learned that its
always essential to send one), he will include in his note
a sharp idea, clever insight, or piece of news that links
in some way to what that person said or to what was
discussed. This will show that he is thinking of their
discussion, which of course will make him or her that
much more motivated to help your son.

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A Final Word

Be sure your daughter has a crisp answer to the question, So, what do you want to do? Then when she
meets someone at a cocktail party or one of your friends
who wants to help, she can give that person a tool for
how he or she can help her. I strongly suggest your
daughter develop what I call an elevator speech, a
one- or two-sentence, twenty second, summary that
will give the people she meets an idea of who she is,
what shes done in the past, what shes interested in, and
what she is looking for going forward. When the person
shes speaking with comes across a potentially valuable
connection or an opportunity later that could be right
for her, her name will come to mind. Three examples:
Im passionate about government and politics, so Im
hoping to find a congressional internship or work as
a paralegal. Or, Ive always been obsessed with the
stock market and investing, so Im interested in any job
connected to the financial markets. Or, Im appalled
by the damage to our environment, so Im committed

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to breaking into a not-for-profit dedicated to reducing global warming. She should practice this elevator
speech until she can recite it smoothly, sincerely, and
at will.
How Your Graduate Can Build His or Her Career
While Not Actively Building His or Her Career
Your son or daughter doesnt need to be single-mindedly
focused on his or her career to use the power of relationships to further professional success. He or she can find
plenty of legitimate opportunities outside of work to
contribute to building professional relationships.
Amanda, a young professional who recently moved
from the West Coast to the East Coast, was a talented
college tennis player. She was interested in joining a
tennis club in New York City. So she asked several of
her friends and mentors, including her uncle, who is an
avid tennis player, which clubs she should consider and
if they knew anyone who could act as a sponsor.
She was introduced to a board member of one of
the tennis clubs and made an appointment to go over
to meet him for coffee. During the next half hour,
they chatted about tennis, but also, naturally, about her
career. Since she wasnt trying to get anything careerwise, the board member found it very natural to take an
interest in what she was doing professionally. Together
they went through the membership directory and built
a list of potential endorsers for the club application process. Amanda had heard of one member, knew another
very peripherally, and the others not at all. But, thanks
to the board members introduction, she was able, over

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] The Parents Guide to The Career Playbook

the next two months, to meet five potential endorsers. Since the purpose of their getting together was to
talk about a legitimate area of mutual interest, tennis,
it was easy for Amanda to schedule 15- or 20-minute
coffee meetings with what turned out to be a handful
of high-powered executives. Some of those meetings
lasted for an hour. Had she sought to set up such meetings on her own for professional or career purposes, they
would have likely turned her down. And the conversations would have been more forced.
The success of this strategy in building relationships
can perhaps be best explained by a principle referred to
by psychologists as the Franklin Effect (another piece
of timeless wisdom from Benjamin Franklin). Counterintuitive as it may sound, one proven way to spark
a relationship with someone in power is to ask him or
her for a favor. In his book 59 Seconds: Think a Little,
Change a Lot, psychologist Richard Wiseman excerpts a
passage from The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
to illustrate a clever way that Franklin managed to win
over an enemy in the Pennsylvania state legislature:
Having heard that he had in his library a certain very scarce
and curious book, I wrote a note to him expressing my desire of
perusing that book and requesting he would do me the favour
of lending it to me for a few days. He sent it immediately and I
returned it in about a week with another note expressing strongly my sense of the favour. When we next met in the House, he
spoke to me (which he had never done before), and with great
civility. And he ever afterward manifested a readiness to serve
me on all occasions, so that we became great friends, and our
friendship continued to his death.

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] The Parents Guide to The Career Playbook

Wiseman has found in his research that when someone does something for you, he or she feels the need
to justify it. Franklin explained his success as follows:
He that has once done you a kindness will be more
ready to do you another than he whom you yourself
have obliged.
Offer to help mentor other aspiring
young professionals; it will give you
a sense of the power of the Franklin Effect.

Let me close with this thought. Your daughter may

not have the ability to create a job or a demand for her
services. Similarly, your son does not have the ability to
control events that unfold around him. However, they
do have control over a very valuable career strategy:
building meaningful relationships that will both move
them forward in their career and make their work life
richer and more enjoyable.
What Your Son or Daughter Can Expect from
The Career Playbook

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] The Parents Guide to The Career Playbook

The good news is that, although the job market today is

less structured and more competitive than ever before,
there are still core principles that can help your son
or daughter achieve success in getting a good job and
launching a successful career. Some principles are timeless, such as the importance of relationships in finding
a job, getting ahead, and living a fulfilled life. Some are
less obvious, such as focusing on the success of others
as much as his or her own career success. In The Career
Playbook, I talk about how to get around the dreaded
Permission Paradoxwhere he or she cant get the
job without the experience but cant get the experience without the job. I detail market-tested interview
strategies that will allow your grad to tell his or her
story and get across the points he or she wants to make,
while answering and asking questions in a way that will
help him or her get the job. I discuss how your grad can
cultivate a mentor who can be an invaluable source of
advice, encouragement, feedback, and introductions.
In Part 1, I discuss how careers really work,
offering a road map for how to think about the arc of
a career and the interwoven roles of money, meaning,
networks, and relationships.
In Part 2, I show how to get the job; how to land and
excel in interviews; how to overcome the catch-22 of
the Permission Paradox; how someone with a degree in
the liberal arts can compete successfully in the marketplace with holders of technical and pre-professional
degrees (business, finance, et cetera); and how to decide
what job to accept when an offer is ultimately received.
In Part 3, I convey, based on my experience in
placing some of todays most prominent and successful

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] The Parents Guide to The Career Playbook

executives and CEOs; how to thrive in a career; how to

get off to the right start in a new job; how to progress
quickly, with sure footing on a career path; and how
to gain experience quickly and seek out challenging
work that will allow your sons or daughters strengths
to shine.
My Background and Unique
Vantage Point on Careers
Through my twenty-two years of executive search and
leadership advisory work at Spencer Stuart, Ive had a
privileged perspective to see how careers are built and
success is achieved. Ive led the recruitments of more
than six hundred executives to Fortune 500 corporations, early-stage companies, educational institutions,
and not-for-profits, ranging from the CEOs of Intel,
PayPal, Sothebys, Twitter, Hulu, Cisco Systems, eBay,
and the New York Times Company, to the MIT Media
Lab, the New York Public Library, and Product (RED).
I have also conducted literally thousands of interviews over the last thirty-five years. I started out as an
admissions-office interviewer as a senior at Vassar
College and went on to lead recruiting as an analyst
and associate on Wall Street and, later, in management
consulting at McKinsey. At Spencer Stuart, I have
conducted an estimated ten thousand executive interviews in my two-plus decades at the company. Ive sat
in boardrooms facilitating and observing board members interviewing CEO and board candidates and other
senior executives hundreds of times. Trust me when I
say that Ive seen the great and the mediocre when it

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] The Parents Guide to The Career Playbook

comes to interviewing prowess.

Along with my professional recruitment work, Ive
conducted career seminars at numerous colleges and
universities, including Vassar, Wesleyan, Dartmouth,
Stanford, Yale, Harvard, Columbia, Tulane, University
of Pennsylvania, Duke, University of Texas, Pennsylvania State, University of Georgia, Northwestern, New
York University, Baruch, Oxford, Cambridge, and Indiana. Ive had the opportunity to give career advice to
career-minded people working across the full gamut of
industries and circumstancesfrom college students to
top executives, MBAs, and unemployed middle managers; from successful CEOs and government and military
leaders to career-stymied individuals trying to recover
from mistakes and career disgrace. Through this experience, Ive been able to see firsthand what really works
and what advice is empty or frustratingly ineffective.
Research Base
In writing The Career Playbook, I sought out data and
information from some rigorous new research my team
and I conducted in order to find insights specific to
young professionals. My research team and I conducted hundreds of interviews with senior business and
not-for-profit executives, human resources officers, and
career-development directors from top colleges and
universities. None of the contributions were more important, however, than what I learned firsthand from
brainstorming with, advising, and listening to the hundreds of young professionals and college and graduate
students whom Ive had the opportunity to work with.

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] The Parents Guide to The Career Playbook

And this includes my own toughest criticsmy three

kids, ages twenty-six, twenty-four, and twenty-one
and scores of their friends, classmates, and associates.
In addition, we conducted two surveys that illuminated many of the insights in this book. The first
was targeted to young professionals. We explored their
insights into some of the key factors about careers,
including future expectations, attitudes about job satisfaction and personal fulfillment, workplace strategies
that influence future success, and career trade-offs when
starting out. The second survey was a sibling survey
for top business and not-for-profit leaders, in which
we asked parallel questions designed to find areas of
alignment or misalignment in those areas that explain
career success.
My Goal
I wrote The Career Playbook for aspiring young professionals who are motivated to launch a great career and
who are looking to carve out a distinctive place in the
world in their first decade after graduation. My hope is
that this book will speak to their personal situation and
circumstances and provide them with the most effective
market-tested strategies to achieve career success and
personal satisfaction.
Even when career opportunities are plentiful, sorting out how to make the best choices on what to do and
what actions to take is still a high-stakes game fraught
with uncertainty and career land mines. Its an unfortunate fact that career decisions tend to be made based
on incomplete information and often under signifi-

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] The Parents Guide to The Career Playbook

cant pressure. Too often, the lessons that would have

served your son or daughter well during the decisionmaking process only become clear in hindsight. But it
can be done. Truly. I hope that after youve read and
acted on the advice in The Parents Guide to The Career
Playbook you will be both well-equipped to help your
son or daughter in their career journey and inspired to
give them the book. Because when he or she internalizes and follows the advice from The Career Playbook,
your daughters or sons success and happiness will seem
inevitable from the start.

Illustrations: Annalora von Pentz

To order The Career Playbook, please visit:
Amazon.com | Barnes & Noble
For more information, please visit
www.thecareerplaybook.com.

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] The Parents Guide to The Career Playbook

Praise for The Career Playbook

The Career Playbook is a fantastic starting point for any new grad or
person early in their career. Jim Citrin clearly lays out the trade-offs
you face in any career, with a concrete road map for how to navigate
them on your path to professional success and personal satisfaction.
Laszlo Bock, senior vice president, people operations, Google
In The Career Playbook, Jim bridges enduring career principles
with relevant, tactical actions for todays social networking workforce. He articulates the important questions to ask oneself in the
pursuit of happiness and fulfillment, offering readers a brightly lit
path toward a life of purpose and contribution.
Bob Iger, chairman and CEO, The Walt Disney Company
After an exciting but exhausting thirty-year career of doing M&A
deals at Morgan Stanley and Blackstone, I never consciously thought
about taking concrete steps to pursue what really made me happy
until I read The Career Playbook. Now Im following Jims advice
and focusing each day on activities that really give me pleasure, as
well as purpose, instead of merely doing what needs to get done.
Thats a real life changer!
Mary Anne Citrino, senior managing director, Blackstone
Group
At Microsoft, we believe that we spend far too much time at work
for it to not be meaningful. Jims advice and guidance promise to
help any young professional progress and ultimately make an impact
with their own life and career.
Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft
I wish I had The Career Playbook thirty years ago. Im keeping a
stack of them on hand as my new favorite giveaway!
Keith Ferrazzi, CEO, Ferrazzi Greenlight, author of Never
Eat Alone

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] The Parents Guide to The Career Playbook

Jim Citrin brings decades of experience and his unmatched exposure to the most successful business leaders to help recent graduates
and young professionals who are searching for the right career path.
If you are looking for a first job or navigating the early years of your
career, there is no better book to read.
John Donahoe, CEO, eBay, Inc.
A terrific, highly practical read for early- to mid-career professionals. Its going to be mandatory reading for my college-age daughters
and all of my young colleagues at Dominos!
J. Patrick Doyle, CEO, Dominos Pizza, Inc.
Over several decades, Jim Citrin has helped corporations recruit
CEOs, watched executives grow, and worked with young adults as
they embarked on their careers. He has combined his experience
with sound research to develop an incredibly insightful set of principles and practical advice to help shape and guide ones career. An
incredibly powerful tool for anyone seeking to steer his or her career
in the right direction.
Hubert Joly, president and CEO, Best Buy
Jims extensive experience guiding and mentoring everyone from
new grads to CEOs really shines through in The Career Playbook.
Full of great perspective, actionable insights, advice, and stories, The
Career Playbook is essential reading for all new grads preparing to
launch their own career adventure.
Lori Goler, vice president of human resources and recruiting,
Facebook
I think EVERY college student should be given a copy of The
Career Playbook as a graduation gift. I surely could have used it
when I got out of school!
Bonnie Hammer, chairman, NBCUniversal Cable
Entertainment Group

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] The Parents Guide to The Career Playbook

An invaluable resource full of practical steps and wise insightsa

must-read for any millennial trying to figure out what to do and how
to get there.
Noreena Hertz, author of Eyes Wide Open: How to Make
Smart Decisions in a Confusing World
Jim is clearly an expert on careers. He weaves in leadership perspectives, illustrates key points with powerful stories, and provides
specific tips that aspiring leaders can immediately use. This is a
must-read playbook for those looking to build their careers.
Mike Krzyzewski, head coach, Duke University mens basketball team and USA basketball mens national team and executive
in residence, Coach K Center on Leadership & Ethics (COLE) at
Dukes Fuqua School of Business
The advice in The Career Playbook is spot-on. After reading it, I
immediately gave it to my twenty-four-year-old daughter, who is
finding it to be invaluable. Its a must-read for any young person
entering the job market, and it will most certainly help demystify
the complex process of seeking employment and succeeding in the
workplace.
Gail McGovern, president and CEO, American Red Cross
We spend the majority of our adult lives working. The sad fact is,
if we play the career game badly, we risk regretting it for years. On
the other hand, if we play it well, it will pay us dividends forever.
This book tells us how to play it wellit is nothing less than a game
changer. The section on the six phases of a career is worth the price
of admission alone.
Greg McKeown, author of Essentialism: The Disciplined
Pursuit of Less
Reading Jim Citrins The Career Playbook is like spending time
with a really knowledgeable friend who has your interests at heart!
His advice is spot-on, whether hes talking about the big picture of
ones career trajectory or the nuts and bolts of preparing to ask for a
raise. Give the book to somebody who needs a mentor. Great stuff.
Michael S. Roth, president, Wesleyan University

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] The Parents Guide to The Career Playbook

Sage, practical, actionable advice and inspiring career stories immediately helpful for young people and professionals at any stage
of their careers to successfully navigate the rapidly shifting sands of
todays workplace environment.
Clara Shih, CEO and cofounder of Hearsay Social, board
director at Starbucks, and author of The Facebook Era
This is the one book every young professional should read. Practical, wise, full of often counterintuitive insightyou wont find a
better road map for planning a modern career.
Mark Thompson, CEO, the New York Times Company
The Career Playbook is grounded in job hunting realities. Pragmatic and engaging, it blends sharp insights and sage advice with
encouraging optimismoffering confidence that motivated job
seekers can succeed in todays hyper-competitive, fast changing, and
confusing world. Any young professional contemplating their career or a future job search will benefit enormously from reading this
special book.
Thomas J. Tierney, chairman and cofounder, The Bridgespan
Group, chairman, Harvard Business School Initiative on
Social Enterprise
Jim truly knows this audience and speaks to them in a language that
they will hear. Too many books on this topic are vague and preachy
in the advice they give; this one is different and offers engaging and
practical advice that a recent college grad or young professional can
put to use immediately. I am sure my students at Harvard Business
School would benefit from reading it too; Ill be recommending they
do so!
Kristen Fitzpatrick, managing director, career and
professional development, Harvard Business School

Find The Career Playbook at

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Amazon
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Books-A-Million
Google Play
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